Thursday, 17 November 2011

A Midlands
mosque was vandalised on the morning of Armistice Day in what is suspected to
be a hate crime.

The
Masjid-E-Umar in Darlaston, West Midlands was vandalised on the morning of
Remembrance Day in what is suspected to be a hate crime in retaliation against
the fifty Muslim individuals who took part in burning poppies on Remembrance
Day 2010.

The attack occurred between the hours of 7:30am and 11:00am. The suspects were
said to have jumped over the locked gates and spray painted a graffiti image of
a poppy on the mosque door with the text ‘‘Burn this one’’ to signal the mosque
as a supporter of the poppy burning incident.

In 2010, to commemorate Remembrance Day, fifty individuals under a now banned
extremist group Muslim Against Crusades, took part in burning poppies near Albert Hall in London causing disruption.

CCTV was in operation outside the mosque but no footage of the perpetrators had
been captured.

Police arrived on the scene shortly after 12pm and patrolled the area for the
remainder of the day. The graffiti was removed but the mosque door was damaged.

This isn’t the first time that the Darlaston mosque has been attacked. Two
years ago, an attacker spray painted racist words on the mosque but was caught
on CCTV and received community service. And following the London 7/7 bombings,
a brick was thrown at the mosque leaving permanent damage to the building.

A Darlaston community member said that the racists who attacked the mosque were
ignorant as they ‘‘are over 2 million Muslims in the UK, how can they blame the
actions of fifty people to be the beliefs of 2 million?’’ Another community
member expressed her thoughts on the attackers, “they have no understanding or
respect for any religion,” she said. “This is a place of worship. We live in a
multicultural society. We have to respect each other. That’s what it means to
be British.”

Other Attacks on Mosques

Similar attacks on mosques throughout the UK have been occurring, some even
more violent than the one at Masjid-E-Umar. In July 2011, a Luton mosque was attacked in the early hours of the morning. The attackers broke the mosque windows
and sprayed graffiti on the walls.

At the Redbridge Islamic Centre, an incident was reported where attackers shouted racial abuse and threw bricks at the
building while worshippers were inside, injuring one man.

Following from the deadly hit-and-run of three Muslim men in Birmingham, in the
wake of the 2011 riots, several mosques in Birmingham received a number of threats.

Original reporting conducted by Reyhana Patel and published by Suite101.

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

The Home Office's decision to ban Muslim Against Crusades is
counter-productive and will have little effect on curbing the group's
activities

On Friday November 11th 2011, British Home Secretary, Theresa May, banned extremist group Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) on the grounds of glorifying terrorism, which is an offence under the Terrorism Act.
The decision to ban the group came as an attempt to prevent a repeat of
last year’s Remembrance Day disruptions, when fifty individuals of MAC
took part in burning poppies near Albert Hall in London clashing with far-right extremist group, the English Defence League (EDL).

The Blair government introduced the ‘glorification principle’ into the Terrorism Act 2006 granting Home Secretaries the power to ban groups whose expression and conduct could be construed as glorifying terrorism.

However,
the Home Secretary’s decision has been criticised as one of desperation
to counter the intensive negative coverage on the immigration checks fiasco and to avoid a second Armistice Day being marred by poppy burning extremists.

Despite
the ban which came into effect from Friday which makes ''membership or
support of MAC a criminal offence,'' the ban will have little effect on
curbing MAC’s activities.

Is banning extremist groups the way forward in tackling terrorism?

Banning
extremist groups whether it is Muslims Against Crusades or the English
Defence League is counter-productive and will have little effect on
stopping these groups from spreading their hate propaganda and
disrupting community relations.

MAC was a renamed successor to
already banned groups such as Islam4UK, Al-Muhajiroun and other
proscribed organisations where the MAC leader, Anjem Choudary, was
active in other ways. All had the same ideology and principles but as
each was proscribed, a new group was formed. The same will happen for
MAC. It will rebrand itself (if they haven’t already done so) and
recommence their activities.

How to deal with extremists

How
should the government tackle such groups? Banning groups will not stop
its members and sympathisers from continuing with their message. The
best way to stop extremist groups is to isolate them, challenge them in a
robust and aggressive way and tackle the ideology behind such views.

MAC
was given enormous publicity with their poppy burning incident last
year which resulted in public outrage from communities across Britain
including the Muslim community.

The EDL has been given platforms on mainstream media outlets such as the BBC to express such views.

This
publicity will only serve as recruitment tools for these groups as well
as motivate them to pursue their cause even further. By ignoring such
groups and not allocating them extensive media coverage, you take away
the power from them.

Tackling the ideology behind such views and
getting down to the root causes of such extremist views is another
method to deal with extremist groups. Labour’s Prevent strategy has been somewhat successful in addressing the root problems and the Coalition government’s revised Prevent has promised to tackle the ideology behind such groups to try to eradicate such views.

What about the EDL?

While
the ban has been welcomed by many communities across the UK, there have
been outcries by members of the British Public as to why only MAC and
not the EDL was banned when both preach hate propaganda and values that
are ‘un-British.’

Anders Breivik, the man behind the Norway attacks had strong links
with the EDL and his motivations to carry out the Oslo attacks were
strongly influenced by the ideology behind this far-right group. EDL’s
demonstrations have also been known for violence and disrupting peace.

According to an article published by Left Foot Forward,
there are also other groups which preach the same message as MAC and no
action has been taken by the government to halt their activities.

For
instance, Anjem Choudry had been been operating the ‘Centre for Islamic
Services’ (CIS) from a building in Whitechapel owned by his big brother
(Yazdani ‘Dani’ Choudary) for well over a year . Tower Hamlets council
even allowed CIS to advertise in the council ‘East End Life’ paper for
several months.MAC has also used the CIS to recruit supporters for their
cause.

A crackdown on operations such as these would be productive rather than just implementing a ban on extremist groups.

It
appears that the Home Secretary’s motivation to ban Muslim Against
Crusades was merely to avoid an unpleasant Remembrance Day 2011 rather
than a meaningful step forward in trying to combat extremism.

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About Me

Journalist, writer and researcher specialising in issues concerning Muslim communities, community cohesion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism policy
Contributes to the Huffington Post UK and the Independent and hosts a blog on combating extremism